Before the parliamentary elections: EU installs 'fact-checkers' in Hungary to combat 'disinformation'

The European Union is now also officially interfering in the electoral struggle of a sovereign member state, in this concrete case in the parliamentary elections in Hungary in early April.

EU wants to fight "disinformation in Hungary"

The AFP (Agence France-Presse) news agency, which also keeps making attempts at slander against "Unser Mitteleuropa," is starting a website to "combat disinformation in Hungary" just three months before the elections, which will decide on the re-election of Viktor Orbán (pictured).

"lakmusz.hu," the first fact-checking website in Hungary, was launched Tuesday, January 11, as the result of an initial 15-month EU project. The European Commission awarded the contract to the French state-funded news agency AFP, the Hungarian website "444.hu" and the foundation "Media Universalis."

AFP will mainly train a team of local journalists with an investigative background and pass on "know-how" to them. In recent years, AFP has built an international network of so-called "fact-checkers." In Hungary, the news agency is Facebook's leading partners in the fight against disinformation.

EU elites in the fight against Orbán

"We are proud to participate in this innovative initiative to support the fight against disinformation in Europe, a major challenge for our democracies," said Phil Chetwynd, Global News Director of AFP.

Hungarians will go to the polls on April 3. The election is likely to be the most exciting in more than a decade, when Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz came to power with a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2010.

Since then, Fidesz has passed a series of laws affecting the media, including the controversial 2010 media law. Recently, the Orbán government issued a legal ban on content that "promotes or depicts" homosexuality or sex change in minors in the media.

After the fall of the communist regime, the Hungarian media market was largely "diversified" by the arrival of international players from Germany and other European countries. The situation began to reverse after the financial crisis in the year 2008, linked to global trends such as declining advertising revenues and the surge of online platforms.

As a result, many international media conglomerates left the media market at the exact moment when the government of Viktor Orbán and businessmen closely associated with him began to reduce foreign influence on the media sector.

In recent times, however, there may be signs of a reversal of this trend, as AFP is not the only international medium that is increasingly active in Hungary. US-funded radio stations Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty began broadcasting again in September 2020. THE German broadcaster RTL, one of the few foreign providers that have not left the country, started a news program.

Soros network signals attack

It is the goal of the "fact-checking project" to investigate public statements or information that may have a significant impact on public discussion, focusing especially on politicians and persons of public life. Specifically, this will mainly mean that statements made by Orbán and his Fidesz will be labeled "Fake News," while opposition candidates will be spared this.

Yacine Le Forestier, AFP's deputy director for Europe, told "Euractiv" that "the project is not about having a conflict with the authorities or criticizing the government."

Nevertheless, the website's first articles show (as was to be expected) that she is on a course of confrontation with the Fidesz-led government, and some government-affiliated media already called her an agent of George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire, who is often targeted for conspiracy theories.

With the so-called "European legal act on media freedom," the EU will also step up its action against unpopular governments within the European Union. This should, from the end of 2022, "improve transparency, the duty of responsibility and independence in measures affecting media freedom and media pluralism."

https://unser-mitteleuropa.com..../vor-parlamentwahl-e